I have the fortunate opportunity to be the sports dietitian for the athletes of University of San Francisco. These athletes are unbelievable. Full time students, full time athletes, many on a tight financial budget and most are living on their own for the first time. They are juggling so much, their schedules are packed – you can only imagine how annoyed they get when I tell them I want them to take more time to eat, eat more food and eat better quality foods.
A huge thing we talk about is cooking and I have to remind myself that some of these athletes have never cooked a thing in their entire life! They are used to Mom’s kitchen – not a small dorm kitchen where they have to make healthy food on their own.
After trying a few different ways to emphasize how easy cooking can be and them looking at me like I was insane, I jumped on my computer and started Googling “How to…” and they were amazed at the online resources that came up to show us easy, user friendly approaches to cooking some basic foods.
Now I know the foodies and experienced home chefs are rolling their eyes at this! However, there are many of us who want to cook – we really, really want to – but are afraid, or overwhelmed or just cannot seem to make it happen. And for you expert chefs out there, maybe you will learn something new too!
For the newbies reading this – and you know who you are – simplify things and just Google the most basic recipe or foods. Just the other day I couldn’t remember how many minutes it takes to poach an egg so I did a search to remind myself and there it was. I also couldn’t remember how many cups of water per cups of quinoa – again, that fancy internet gave me the answer!
This takes all the drama out of it. Keeps things simple and throws away all excuses. How great it that?!?
Here are some searches I did just this past week for my athletes:
How to poach an egg
How to roast a chicken
How to bake a potato
How to make a frittata
How to cook quinoa
How to cook fish
How to roast vegetables
How to seed a pomegranate with no mess (one of my favorite tricks!)
Try a new recipe this weekend and enjoy! (And no…this post was not sponsored by Google)